| Your presence is mandatory : a novel / Sasha Vasilyuk. |
 In 2007 Ukraine, after Yefim Shulman, beloved husband, grandfather and World War II veteran, passes away, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase that reveals his lifelong secret, which forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he defended. |
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| One vacant chair / Joe Coomer. |
 "Sarah's aunt Edna paints portraits of chairs. Not people in chairs, just chairs. The old house is filled with the paintings, and the chairs themselves surround her work-a silent yet vigilant audience. At the funeral of Grandma Hutton-whom Edna has cared for through an agonizingly long and vague illness-Sarah begins helping her aunt clean up the last of a life. This includes honoring Grandma's surprising wish to have her ashes scattered in Scotland. "We were two fat women, eighteen years apart, a chair artist and a designer of Christmas ornaments, who only knew we had troubles and a hot summer to get through," says Sarah. But as it turns out, there is a great deal more to quirky Aunt Edna's troubles than Sarah could possibly imagine. As the novel turns from the hot, oppressive heat of Texas to the misty beauty of Scotland, she learns of her aunt's remarkable secret life and comes to fully understand the fragile business of living, and even of dying. Praised for his richly drawn characters and as a master storyteller, Joe Coomer is at the height of his powers in One Vacant Chair." ... from publisher's description. |
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| An accidental man / Iris Murdoch. |
 "Set in the time of the Vietnam War, this story concerns the plight of a young American, happily installed in a perfect job in England, engaged to a wonderful girl, who is suddenly drafted to a war he disapproves of."--Back cover. |
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| The late child : a novel / Larry McMurtry. |
 A roller coaster trip across the U.S. by three women, a boy and a dog. One of the women has lost a daughter and to help her overcome her grief the other two, who are her sisters, are taking her home to their farm in Oklahoma. But when they get there she decides home is really back in Las Vegas. Part-funny, part-sad, a sequel to The desert rose. |
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| There's something about Christmas / Debbie Macomber. |
 While flying around the state of Washington to interview finalists in a fruitcake recipe contest, Emma Collins, newspaper reporter and obituary writer, discovers that her pilot, ornery Oliver Hamilton, could be the love of her life. |
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| Choice : a novel / Neel Mukherjee |
 "'How ought one to live?' This is the question that obsesses London-based publisher Ayush, driving him to question every act of consumption. He embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him: his practical economist husband; their twins; and even the authors he edits and publishes. One of those authors, a mysterious M. N. Opie, writes a story about a young academic involved in a car accident that causes her life to veer in an unexpected direction. Another author, an economist, describes how the gift of a cow to an impoverished family on the West Bengal-Bangladesh border sets them on a startling path to tragedy. Together, these connected narratives raise the question: How free are we really to make our own choices? In a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, Neel Mukherjee confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life."-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The housemaid / Freida McFadden. |
 "Every day I clean the Winchesters' beautiful house top to bottom. I pick up their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor. I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband, Andrew, seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew's handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it's hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina's life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband... I try on one of Nina's pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it's like. But she soon finds out... and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it's far too late. But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don't know who I really am. They don't know what I'm capable of..."--Page 4 of cover. |
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| The evolution of Annabel Craig : a novel / Lisa Grunwald. |
 "Dayton, Tennessee. 1925. It is in this sleepy mountain town where Annabel, a devout woman, falls in love with George Craig, a cosmopolitan defense attorney. Annabel's outlook on everything from life to love to the law is shaped by her faith; George sees the law something to bend to his will, and sees a world shaped by science and reason alone. By the end of the year, their marriage, and the private battle waged within it, will come up against the true battlefield that Dayton is destined to become when John Scopes, a local teacher, is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The trial is a spectacle unlike anything Dayton has seen before. William Jennings Bryan--a famous, pious politician--joins the prosecution, pitting himself and his beliefs against the ruthless defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Journalists descend in a frenzy, thrusting the town and its denizens into the national spotlight. It is in this light that the cracks in Annabel's marriage to a fickle yet cunning man--along with her most steadfast beliefs--emerge. As the ongoing trial divides neighbor against neighbor, so too, does it divide the Craigs in unexpected ways. But it is in these conflicts--one waged in newspaper headlines, and another behind closed doors--that Annabel will truly begin to wonder, for the first time in her life, for herself and herself alone, and discover that the path to our greatest evolution of all, is self-discovery"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Night falls on Predicament Avenue / Jaime Jo Wright. |
 "In 1910, Effie joins forces with an English newcomer to discover what lies behind the doors of the abandoned house on Predicament Avenue. In the present day, Norah reluctantly inherits the house turned bed and breakfast, where her first guest, a crime historian and podcaster, is set on uncovering the truth about what haunts this place"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The limits / Nell Freudenberger. |
 "A novel set in French Polynesia and New York City about three characters--a fifteen year old girl toggling between her mother, a marine biologist studying coral reefs on an island off the coast of Tahiti, and her father, a surgeon in Manhattan--who undergo massive transformations over the course of a single year"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The jinn daughter : a novel / Rania Hanna. |
 "Nadine is a jinn tasked with one job: telling the stories of the dead. She rises every morning to gather pomegranate seeds--the souls of the dead--that have fallen during the night. With her daughter Layala at her side, she eats the seeds and tells their stories. Only then can the departed pass through the final gate of death. But when the seeds stop falling, Nadine knows something is terribly wrong. All her worst fears are confirmed when she is visited by Kamuna, Death herself and ruler of the underworld, who reveals her desire for someone to replace her: it is Layala she wants. Nadine will do whatever it takes to keep her daughter safe, but Kamuna has little patience and a ruthless drive to get what she has come for. Layala's fate, meanwhile, hangs in the balance. Rooted in Middle Eastern mythology, Rania Hanna deftly weaves subtle, yet breathtaking, magic through this vivid and compelling story that has at its heart the universal human desire to, somehow, outmaneuver death" -- Provided by publisher. |
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| On the tobacco coast / Christopher Tilghman. |
 "The culmination of Christopher Tilghman's great Chesapeake saga, a story spanning four centuries of an American family"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The outlaw Noble Salt : a novel / Amy Harmon. |
 "When infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy decides to go straight, he discovers that too many of the powerful men he crossed won't let bygones be bygones. To have a chance at a new life, he'll have to become someone else entirely. A brief, fateful encounter with the celebrated singer Jane Touissant on the eve of his escape offers a glimpse of what might have been, but Butch disappears, leaving her behind, until their paths unexpectedly converge again in Paris. Despite having discovered his true identity, Jane trusts the outlaw and enlists his protection on her upcoming American tour. Although Butch is reluctant to agree, fearing his sordid past may put the woman and her young son in danger, the salvation she offers is too hard to resist. As they set forth on their journey, Butch's past and Jane's secrets put them at risk from threats far greater than the law, and this legend of the American West will have to decide what matters most-his life, his legacy, or the woman he loves"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Christa comes out of her shell / Abbi Waxman. |
 "After a tumultuous childhood, Christa Liddle has hidden away, both figuratively and literally. Happily studying sea snails in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Christa finds her tranquil existence thrown into chaos when her once-famous father--long thought dead after a plane crash--turns out to be alive, well, and ready to make amends. The world goes wild, fascinated by this real-life saga, pinning Christa and her family under the spotlight. As if that weren't enough, her reunion with an old childhood friend reveals an intense physical attraction neither was expecting and both want to act on . . . if they can just keep a lid on it. When her father's story starts to develop cracks, Christa fears she will lose herself, her potential relationship, and--most importantly--any chance of making it back to her snails before they forget her completely."-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Flight of the wild swan / Melissa Pritchard. |
 "Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. From her adolescence, Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life's calling to serve the sick and suffering. Overcoming Victorian hierarchies, familial expectation, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness, she used her hard-won celebrity as a battlefield nurse to bring the profession out of its shadowy, disreputable status and elevate nursing to a skilled practice and compassionate art. In lush, lyrical detail, Melissa Pritchard reveals Nightingale as a rebel who wouldn't relent--one whose extraordinary life offers a grand lesson in inspired will"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The British booksellers : a novel of the Forgotten Blitz / Kristy Cambron. |
 "Inspired by real accounts of the Forgotten Blitz bombings, The British Booksellers highlights the courage of those whose lives were forever changed by war—and the stories that bind us in the fight for what matters most. A tenant farmer’s son had no business daring to dream of a future with an earl’s daughter, but that couldn’t keep Amos Darby from his secret friendship with Charlotte Terrington . . . until the reality of the Great War sobered youthful dreams. Now decades later, he bears the brutal scars of battles fought in the trenches and their futures that were stolen away. His return home doesn’t come with tender reunions, but with the hollow fulfillment of opening a bookshop on his own and retreating as a recluse within its walls. When the future Earl of Harcourt chose Charlotte to be his wife, she knew she was destined for a loveless match. Though her heart had chosen another long ago, she pledges her future even as her husband goes to war. Twenty-five years later, Charlotte remains a war widow who divides her days between her late husband’s declining estate and operating a quaint Coventry bookshop—Eden Books, lovingly named after her grown daughter. And Amos is nothing more than the rival bookseller across the lane. As war with Hitler looms, Eden is determined to preserve her father’s legacy. So when an American solicitor arrives threatening a lawsuit that could destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to preserve, mother and daughter prepare to fight back. But with devastation wrought by the Luftwaffe’s local blitz terrorizing the skies, battling bookshops—and lost loves, Amos and Charlotte—must put aside their differences and fight together to help Coventry survive. From deep in the trenches of the Great War to the storied English countryside and the devastating Coventry Blitz of WWII, The British Booksellers explores the unbreakable bonds that unite us through love, loss, and the enduring solace that can be found between the pages of a book." -- Goodreads.com |
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| Welcome home, Caroline Kline : a novel / Courtney Preiss. |
 "In New York City, newly single Caroline is stumbling her way through the recent implosion of her life. After a surprise breakup leaves her with no job, no apartment, and no backup plan, she's unsure of what to do next. That is, until Caroline's father, Leo, injures himself in a bad fall and asks her to move home to the Jersey Shore suburb she'd always been desperate to escape. But Leo doesn't want his daughter to be his caretaker; he needs her to replace him as third baseman in his local men's softball league. This isn't just any season, Leo claims. This is the year they have a real shot at the World Series, the pride and joy of Glen Brook, New Jersey. Caroline agrees to move home, concerned that Leo is hiding a more serious health condition than he's willing to admit. As the first female player in a league full of old-school men, she's up against more than a few challenges. And when a night gone wrong lands her in the path of her hometown crush-and first love-Caroline struggles to reconcile the life she thought she'd have with the life she might actually want. Sharply observed and full of humor and heart, Welcome Home, Caroline Kline is a touching tribute to the many unconventional paths that victory, and recovery, can take"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Nothing but the bones / Brian Panowich. |
 "In McFalls County, local crime boss Gareth Burroughs runs everything on the mountain. And Nelson "Nails" McKenna has been his enforcer since he was a teenager, though his heart's not really in the dirty work. Then one night in a local roadhouse, Nails goes too far, defending a woman, and even Burroughs's reach can't get him out of this one. With a dead body and countless witnesses, Nails and the woman become fugitives on the run, and unlikely partners. But on the road to Jacksonville, where a possible escape awaits, there's more than one interested party on the pair's trail, and the glimpse they had of getting away scot free suddenly seems elusive. In the end, Nails must make one final stand for his freedom - or pay with both of their lives"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Lilith : a novel / Eric Rickstad. |
 "After her son Lydan suffers traumatic injuries in a school shooting, single mom Elisabeth Ross grows enraged at men in power. If they won't do anything to help end this epidemic of violence, she will. Believing it's her destiny, she sets out to awaken the world to the cowards these men are and commits her own shocking act of violence. Going by the name Lilith--the first wife of Adam who fled Eden rather than serve a man--she posts a video of her crime that reverberates throughout society. Idolized by some, demonized by others, and sought by the FBI and vigilantes alike, Elisabeth must keep her identity a secret as she tries to care for her son. As the FBI draws closer, and Lydan starts to display odd, terrifying behavior, Elisabeth begins to question her act of violence and the very roots and mythology of violence itself. Was her act justified or has she become the monster that the original Lilith was accused of being? And will she ever escape what she's done without losing her son forever?" -- Goodreads. |
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| Crooked seeds : a novel / Karen Jennings. |
 "In her parched, crumbling corner of a Cape Town public housing complex, Deidre van Deventer receives a call from the South African police department. Her family home, recently reclaimed by the government, has become the scene of a criminal investigation. The remains of several bodies have just been unearthed from their land, after decades underground. Detectives pepper her with questions: Was your brother a member of a pro-apartheid group in the 1990s? Is it true that he was building bombs as part of a terrorist plot? Deirdre doesn't know the answers to most of these questions. All she knows is that she was denied-repeatedly-the life she felt she deserved: overshadowed by her brother, then abandoned by her daughter, Deidre has been left to watch over her aging mother, making do with government help and the fading generosity of her neighbors. But as alarming evidence from the investigation continues to surface, and detectives pressure her to share what she knows of her family's disturbing past, Deidre must finally confront her own shattered memories so that something better might emerge from what remains"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Negative space : a novel / Gillian Linden. |
 "A gem of a debut novel about a young mother navigating the instabilities of teaching, parenting, and marriage in the wake of the pandemic. With deadpan humor and a keen eye for the strangeness of our days, Negative Space follows a week in the life of a part-time high school English teacher. At home, her two children, increasingly restless in the wake of the pandemic, ask constant questions that flit from the weirdness of television shows to casual conversations about mortality. Her husband, always on business calls with Hong Kong at odd hours, shows up for meals only occasionally. At school, her students seem increasingly disconnected, and some put worrying details of their lives into their creative writing assignments. And then there’s the possibly inappropriate interaction she thinks she saw between her boss and a student. . . . Filled with sly observations about our off-kilter days, Negative Space is a witty and resonant novel about the challenges of motherhood, the question of what we owe the people around us, and the search for normalcy in a fractured world." -- Provided by publisher. |
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| Watch it burn / Kristen Bird. |
 Three women work to uncover the scorching lies and scandal behind a self-help movement, igniting a powder keg of secrets that could blow their town apart, in this suspense novel perfect for readers who love Southern mystery. -- It's early morning in the small Texas town of Edenberg when the body of sixty-five-year-old Beverly Hoffman is discovered in the Guadalupe River -- drowned in only two inches of water. After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin. Jenny is attempting to revive her flailing marriage and her all-but-DOA career, and she knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly's daughter-in-law, Robin, who's eager to expose the truth. Beverly had been beloved in the tight-knit community, having cofounded the wildly popular personal-development company Genetive, Inc., alongside her influential husband. But something sinister has been smoldering beneath the surface of their picturesque hometown. And Genetive is at the center of it all. -- Back cover |
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| The marriage sabbatical : a novel / Lian Dolan. |
 "What if you could take a vacation from your marriage? A married couple decides to give it a shot in this fun, adventurous novel by Lian Dolan, the popular author of The Sweeney Sisters and Lost and Found in Paris"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The north line : a novel / Matt Riordan. |
 "Everyone believes Adam to be something he's not. Sometimes that's because he's told them a story. Sometimes he's told himself one. But when Adam joins an Alaskan fishing crew that's promising quick money, the dangerous work and harsh lifestyle strip away all fabrications and force a dark-hearted exploration of who he really is. On the unforgiving Bering Sea, Adam finds the adventure and authenticity of a fisherman's life revelatory. The labor required to seize bounty from the ocean invigorates him, and the often crude comradery accompanies a welcome, hard-earned wisdom. But when a strike threatens the entire season and violence stalks the waves, Adam is thrust into a struggle for survival at the edge of the world, where evolutionary and social forces collide for outcomes beyond anyone's control. In his riveting debut novel, Matt Riordan pairs personal experiences with a master storyteller's eye in a piercing examination of the quest for identity in the face of tempests within and without."-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The stone home : a novel / Crystal Hana Kim. |
 "A hauntingly poetic family drama and coming-of-age story that reveals a dark corner of South Korean history through the eyes of a small community living in a reformatory center--a stunning work of great emotional power from the critically acclaimed author of If You Leave Me"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Village weavers : a novel / Myriam J.A. Chancy. |
 "From award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families forever joined by country-and by long-held secrets-and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken. In 1940s' Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship-until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. After François Duvalier's rule turns deadly in the 1950s, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie marries into a wealthy Dominican family. Across decades and continents, through personal successes and failures, they are parted and reunited, slowly learning the truth of their singular relationship. Finally, six decades later, with both women in the United States, a sudden phone call brings them back together once more to reckon with and forgive the past. Told with power and frankness, Village Weavers confronts the silences around class, race, and nationality; charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart; and envisions two girls-connected their entire lives-who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other's hearts"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| There's going to be trouble : a novel / Jen Silverman. |
 "Minnow Hunter has always tried to lead the life her single father, Christopher, modeled - private, quiet, hardworking, apolitical. So she is rocked when a split-second decision makes her the extremely public face of a scandal in the small town where she teaches. She even loses the support of her father, who stops speaking to her when the media start harassing him too. Overwhelmed, Minnow flees to a teaching position in Paris, hoping distance and time will let her start over. But what if Christopher wasn't always the restrained, conservative man he appears? What if he has a troubled and tragic past that he has taken great pains to bury - from the world and from his daughter? In Paris, Minnow falls into an exhilarating and all-consuming relationship with a young French man, whose activism has placed him at odds with his powerful family. As Minnow lets herself be pulled into the dangerous action her lover and his friends are planning, she draws close to repeating the secret tragedy from her father's past and forever changing her own future. Their intertwining stories take us through the turmoil of the late sixties student movements and the chaos of the modern world, as both Christopher and Minnow ask themselves how far they're willing to go for change. . . and whether they can live with the mistakes they make along the way"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The Titanic Survivors Book Club : a novel / Timothy Schaffert. |
 "For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship's second-class library. But just as he was about to board to tend to his library throughout the passage, a superior takes his place, leaving Yorick stranded at the dock. The Titanic was not Yorick's first brush with death, but as with every near-miss he manages to escape into the world of books. After he learns of the ship's sinking, he takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. It's at his shop that he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket-holders who didn't board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to transform their group into a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties through the guise of discussing contentious works such as The Awakening or The Picture of Dorian Gray. Of the ragtag group of survivors, Yorick finds himself particularly drawn to the wealthy candy heiress Zinnia and the mysterious and alluring Haze. Yorick feels like an outsider looking in, falling hopelessly for Haze as Haze courts Zinnia; a tangled triangle of love and friendship forms between them. Yet with the Great War looming, their close-knit group is shattered, only brought back together once the death of a fellow book club member leaves them wondering what fate has in store for each of them"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| A good happy girl : a novel / Marissa Higgins. |
 "Helen, a jittery attorney with a self-destructive streak, is secretly reeling from a disturbing crime of neglect that her parents recently committed. Historically happy to compartmentalize - distracting herself by hooking up with lesbian couples, doting on her grandmother, and flirting with a young administrative assistant - Helen finally meets her match with Catherine and Katrina, a married couple who startle and intrigue her with their ever-increasing sexual and emotional intensity. Perceptive and attentive, Catherine and Katrina prod at Helen's life, revealing a childhood tragedy she's been repressing. When her father begs her yet again for help getting parole, she realizes that she has a bargaining chip to get answers to her past. In her exploration of queer domesticity, effects of incarceration on family, and intergenerational poverty, Marissa Higgins offers empathy to characters who don't often receive it, with unsettling results." -- jacket flap. |
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| Ordinary bear / C.B. Bernard |
 "Farley stands out among his Inupiat neighbors in the Alaska village he calls home, both white and enormous, like the hungry polar bears that wander its streets. Jovial and a little hapless, he works as an investigator for a North Slope oil company, passing the long Arctic winters drinking whiskey with the village's preacher and playing in the weekly poker game hosted by its matriarch and mayor. When his young daughter visits from thousands of miles away in Portland - where she lives with her mother, who despises him - a shocking moment of violence leaves her dead and Farley injured. Crippled by his wounds and hamstrung with guilt over his inability to save her, he goes home to Oregon to try to make amends. There he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a single mother and her daughter. With their help, he begins the slow process of healing - until the girl goes missing. Faced with the opportunity to do what he couldn't do for his own daughter, Farley sets out on a brutal odyssey through Portland's quirky and dangerous underworld, using his wits and his fists to try to save her life along with the shattered remains of his own. |
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| The house of broken bricks : a novel / Fiona Williams. |
 "Set in a West Country farming village, The House of Broken Bricks lays bare the complexities of day-to-day life for a mixed-race family. Jess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her from a Jamaican diaspora in a city where she easily blends in into a creaking house on a floodplain where predatory birds hover over fields, eels coil in the river mud, buses run twice a day, neighbors barter honey for cider and no one looks like her. While Jess and Richard settle into the village rhythm, the dramatic arrival of their twin sons recasts the family dynamic, stirring up complicated feelings and questions of belonging. Full of surprises, deeply attuned to the rhythms of language and nature, this lyrical novel with a magical realist strand captures the pain and beauty of life and death as well as the transformational power of changing seasons"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The Sicilian inheritance : a novel / Jo Piazza. |
 "Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie's death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara's great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn't die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered. Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and prove her birthright. Flashing back to the past, we meet Serafina, a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly it isn't long before a woman challenging the status quo finds herself in danger. As Sara discovers more about Serafina she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The husbands : a novel / Holly Gramazio. |
 "A novel about a woman who one day comes home to find her attic is magic and producing an endless supply of interchangeable husbands"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Clear : a novel / Carys Davies. |
 "John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland--Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. The two men do not speak a common language, but as John builds a dictionary of Ivar's world, they learn to communicate and, as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person, they build a fragile, unusual connection. Unfolding in the 1840s in the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances--which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions--this singular, beautiful, deeply surprising novel explores the differences and connections between us, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can survive despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, sensitive and spellbinding, Clear is a profound and pleasurable read."--Publisher's website |
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| Tell / Jonathan Buckley. |
 "A novel of intense, flickering intelligence, Tell is structured as a series of interviews with a woman who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman and art collector who has mysteriously disappeared, and may or may not have committed suicide. What might be a gloomy subject is instead alluring, lit from within by a lively deep knowledge of human nature: Buckley's eye for motivations brings to mind a Thomas Hardy for our atomized 21st-century. A thrilling novel of strange, intoxicating immediacy, Tell carries the pleasures of exciting new gossip enjoyed with a rare old cognac by a crackling fire"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The night in question / Susan Fletcher |
 Florrie Butterfield--eighty-seven, one-legged, and of cheerful disposition--believes there can't be any more surprises in life. Yet one evening, there's an accident at Babbington Hall--the adult residence where she lives--so shocking and strange that Florrie is suspicious; is this really an accident? Or is she being lied to? Is she living alongside a potential murderer? In her efforts to learn the truth, Florrie is forced to look back on her own life, with all its passions and regrets; she must confront her own bloody secret--and, at last, confess. Above all, she learns, through the help of her new friend, Stanhope, that when it comes to love, it's never too late. |
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| The audacity / Ryan Chapman. |
 "In 72 hours, a blockbuster exposé will reveal Victoria Stevens' multibillion-dollar startup as a massive fraud. And Victoria has gone missing. Has she faked her death, leaving her husband Guy Sarvananthan to face the fallout-and potential jail time? Should Guy flee to his native Sri Lanka, an outcast and a failure? Or embrace denial? Why not: He takes the corporate jet to a private Caribbean island, where the 0.0001% have gathered to decide which one of the world's biggest problems to "eradicate forever." Guy drinks and drugs his way into oblivion, through manicured jungles and aboard superyachts, amid captains of industry, legions of staff, and unlikely saboteurs. Meanwhile, Victoria narrates her side of the story from an off-the-grid location in the California desert. In scribbled diary entries shot through with cultish self-help mantras, she plots her comeback, confident she'll prove everyone wrong. Again."-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The gallopers. |
 1953. Eli is nineteen years old and lives alongside a cursed field with his strange aunt Dreama. Six months before, his mother disappeared during the North Sea flood. Unsure of his place in the world and of the man he is becoming, Eli is ready to run. Shane Wright is a man with plenty to hide. Caught in a complicated relationship with Eli, Shane is desperate to maintain the double life that he has created for himself. Then Jimmy Smart appears. Jimmy Smart, the mysterious showman who turns the gallopers at the fair. Under his watchful gaze, Eli discovers a world he knows nothing about with rules he cannot understand. |
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| Lost man's lane : a novel / Scott Carson. |
 For a sixteen-year-old, a summer internship working for a private investigator seems like a dream come true--particularly since the PI is investigating the most shocking crime to hit Bloomington, Indiana, in decades. A local woman has vanished, and the last time anyone saw her, she was in the backseat of a police car driven by a man impersonating an officer. Marshall Miller's internship puts him at the center of the action, a position he relishes until a terrifying moment that turns public praise for his sharp observations and uncanny memory into accusations of lying and imperiling the case. His detective mentor withdraws, friends and family worry and whisper, and Marshall alone understands that the darkness visiting his town this summer goes far beyond a single crime. Now his task is to explain it--and himself. -- Provided by publisher. |
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| When the world goes quiet : a novel / Gian Sardar. |
 It's 1918 in German-occupied Bruges, Belgium. With luck, Evelien will make it to the end of the war and be given what she was promised: a prized painting in exchange for safeguarding her employer's possessions. Until then, Evelien knows to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. But life never goes to plan, especially in the war. A member of the resistance approaches Evelien: steal a list of names hidden in her employer's home. In return, she'll get a letter from her long-missing husband, Emiel. She'd lost hope of Emiel's survival, but the promised letter puts her certainty of his death in question. Evelien begins with devastating demands of battle. Their shared passion for art deepens the bond, and Evelien faces a heart-wrenching truth: she longs for Emiel's safe return...but not necessarily to her. As the final days of the war loom closer, Eveline has never been in more danger. And should she survive the war's bitter end, what choices will she make for a life beyond liberation? --Back cover. |
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| A better world : a novel / Sarah Langan. |
 "You'll be safe here. That's what the greasy tour guide tells the Farmer-Bowens when they visit Plymouth Valley, a walled-off company town with clean air, pantries that never go empty, and blue-ribbon schools. On a very trial basis, the company offers to hire Linda Farmer's husband, a numbers genius, and relocate her whole family to this bucolic paradise for the .0001%. Though Linda will have to sacrifice her medical career back home, the family jumps at the opportunity. They'd be crazy not to take it. With the outside world literally falling apart, this might be the Farmer-Bowens last chance. But fitting in takes work. The pampered locals distrust outsiders, cruelly snubbing Linda, Russell, and their teen twins. And the residents fervently adhere to a group of customs and beliefs called Hollow...but what exactly is Hollow? It's Linda who brokers acceptance by volunteering her medical skills to the most powerful people in town with their pet charity, ActHollow. In the months afterward, everything seems fine. Sure, Russell starts hyperventilating through a paper bag in the middle of the night, and the kids have drifted like bridgeless islands, but living here's worth sacrificing their family's closeness, isn't it? At least they'll survive. The trouble is, the locals never say what they think. They seem scared. And Hollow's ominous culminating event, the Plymouth Valley Winter Festival, is coming. Linda's warned by her husband and her powerful new friends to stop asking questions. But the more she learns, the more frightened she becomes. Should the Farmer-Bowens be fighting to stay, or fighting to get out?"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The Berlin letters : a Cold War novel / Katherine Reay. |
 "Near the end of the Cold War, a CIA code breaker discovers a symbol she recognizes from her childhood, which launches her across the world to the heart of Berlin just before the wall comes tumbling down"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Sweetness in the skin : a novel / Ishi Robinson. |
 Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family's social standing), her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her mother Paulette (who's rarely home).When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity, and promises to send for her niece in one year's time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam so she can attend school there. But when Pumkin's grandmother dies, she's left alone with her volatile mother, and as soon as her estranged father turns up--as lazy and conniving as ever--the household's fortunes take a turn for the worse. Pumkin must somehow find a way to raise the money for her French exam, so she can free herself from her household and reunite with her beloved aunt in France. In a moment of ingenuity, she turns her passion for baking into a true business. Making batches of sweet potato pudding, coconut drops and chocolate cakes, Pumkin develops a booming trade--but when her school and her mother find out what she's up to, everything she's worked so hard for may slip through her fingers. . . .Sweetness in the Skin is a funny and heartbreaking story about a young girl figuring out who she is, what she is capable of--and where she truly belongs. |
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| In the shadow of the Greenbrier : a novel / Emily Matchar. |
 "Nestled in the hills of West Virginia lies White Sulphur Springs, home to the Greenbrier Resort. Long a playground for presidents and film stars, the Greenbrier has its own gravitational pull. Over ten decades, four generations of the Zelner family must grapple with their place in its shadow . . . and within their own family. In 1942, young mother Sylvia is desperate to escape her stifling marriage, especially when it means co-running Zelner's general store with her husband. When the Greenbrier is commandeered for use as a luxury prison, Sylvia finds her fidelity strained and her heart on the line. Seventeen years later, Sylvia's daughter, Doree, struggles to fit in, eagerly awaiting the day she'll leave for college and meet a nice Jewish boy. But when a handsome stranger comes to town and her brother Alan's curiosity puts him and Sylvia at risk, Doree is torn between loyalty and desire. An immersive family saga rich with historical detail, In the Shadow of the Greenbrier explores the inevitable clash between past and future and the extraordinary moments in ordinary lives"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The Paris novel / Ruth Reichl. |
 "When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual inheritance: a one-way plane ticket and a note reading "Go to Paris." But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a childhood trauma, and her mother's negligent parenting style, have kept her strictly confined to her comfort zone, even in adulthood. When her boss encourages her to time off, Stella resigns herself to honor her mother's wishes, even if a spontaneous trip to Paris is the last thing she wants. Even in a new city, Stella can't help but fall into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. But one day, she stumbles across a consignment store and tries on a fabulous vintage dress. The shopkeeper allows her to borrow it for the day if she goes on an adventure. So Stella decides to treat herself to oysters and wine for lunch, where she has a chance encounter with a dapper octogenarian art collector, Jules. He immediately recognizes Stella needs a proper introduction to the magical side of Paris and takes her under his wing. Amid decadent meals and encounters with a veritable who's who of the 1980s Paris art and culinary worlds, Stella begins to understand what it might mean to live a bigger life. As weeks pass, Stella ends up living at the bookstore Shakespeare & Company as a "tumbleweed," uncovering a hundred-year-old art mystery, and unlocking a passion for food that may be connected to her past, and the true reason she has been sent to Paris. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to what it means to live deliciously: to be authentic, to embrace adventure, and to find a home in the last place you might expect"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The library of borrowed hearts / Lucy Gilmore. |
 "Librarian Chloe Sampson has been struggling: to take care of her three younger siblings, to find herself, to make ends meet. She's just about at the end of her rope when she stumbles across a rare edition of a book from the 1960s at the local flea market. Deciding it's a sign of her luck turning, she takes it home with her-only to be shocked when her cranky hermit of a neighbor swoops in and offers to buy it for an exorbitant price. Intrigued, Chloe takes a closer look at the book only to find notes scribbled in the margins between two young lovers back when the book was new...one of whom is almost definitely Jasper Holmes, the curmudgeon next door. And when she begins following the clues left behind, she discovers this isn't the only old book in town filled with their romantic marginalia. This kickstarts a literary scavenger hunt that Chloe is determined to see through to the end. What happened to the two tragic lovers who corresponded in the margins of so many different library books? And what does it have to do with the old, sad man next door-who only now has begun to open his home to Chloe and her siblings? In a romantic tale that spans the decades, Chloe discovers that there's much more to her neighbor than meets the eye. And in allowing herself to accept the unexpected friendship he offers, she learns that some love stories begin in the unlikeliest of places"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Darling girls / Sally Hepworth. |
 "Get ready for another twisty domestic thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of THE SOULMATE. From the outside, Alicia, Jessica and Norah might seem like ordinary women you'd meet on the street any day of the week. Sure, Jessica has a little OCD and Norah has some anger issues. And Alicia has low self-esteem that manifests itself in surprising ways. But these three have a bond that no one can fully understand. It's a bond that takes them back decades, to when they were girls, and they lived on a farm with a foster mother named Miss Fairchild. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild, and they thought they were free. But the reach of someone with such power is long, and even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When bones are discovered buried under the farmhouse of their childhood, they are called in by the police to tell what they know. Against their will, they are brought back to the past, and to Miss Fairchild herself. DARLING GIRLS asks the questions: what are we capable of when in a desperate place? How much can we hide the demons inside us? And can the past ever truly be buried?"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The Spirit / Thomas Page ; with a new introduction by Grady Hendrix. |
 It has many names: Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch. But whatever it is, it's out there in the woods and leaving a trail of blood and severed heads behind it. For John Moon, a half-mad Indian, it is a spirit that holds the key to his inner self. He worships its power and he'll kill to protect it. Desperate, exhausted, half-starved, Moon will follow it wherever it goes. For Raymond Jason, killing it has become an obsession. He was the only survivor of a hunting trip to the Rockies where the hunters became the monster's prey. Now he is determined to track the creature down and destroy it. But when the two men finally corner their quarry they set loose a flood of terror and destruction that may leave no survivors. |
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| The twilight garden : a novel / Sara Nisha Adams. |
 Warring London neighbors Winston and Bernice share an empty patch of greenery lost to time, but when Winston receives photographs of the garden in bloom many years prior, they decide to lay down their arms to revitalize the garden and help revive the community spirit that's been languishing for so long. |
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| The secrets beneath / Kimberley Woodhouse. |
 Anna Lakeman has spent her life working alongside her paleontologist father, drawing intricate sketches at every dig. When they find dinosaur bones near their home in Wyoming Territory, they're given the opportunity of a lifetime and are swiftly caught up in the competitive era of the Bone Wars. But after her father becomes sick and an old beau returns for the summer, Anna's world is upended, and the practical, orderly life she has made for herself shatters. Medical student Joshua Ziegler left his hometown to forget Anna, the one woman he truly loved and deeply hurt. But when he returns, time hasn't erased the feelings they've always had for each other. After Joshua's nephew goes missing - just like his sister did years ago - and Anna's job is threatened, tensions mount and dangerous secrets are unearthed. |
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| How to end a love story : a novel / Yulin Kuang. |
 Helen Zhang hasn't seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She's even scored a coveted spot in the writers room of the TV adaptation of her young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except... Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he's well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn't have taken the job on Helen's show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can't pass up. Grant's exactly as Helen remembers him - charming, popular, and lovable in ways that she's never been. And Helen's exactly as Grant remembers too - brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen's parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he's in the picture at all. When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet... the key to making peace with their past - and themselves - might just lie in holding on to each other in the present. |
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| Late bloomer : a novel / Mazey Eddings. |
 "A sexy, sapphic, opposites-attract romance with Mazey Eddings' signature sparkling voice! Winning the lottery has ruined Opal Devlin's life. After quitting her dead-end job where she'd earned minimum wage and even less respect, she's bombarded by people knocking at her door for a handout the second they found out her bank account was overflowing with cash. And Opal can't seem to stop saying yes. With her tender heart thoroughly abused, Opal decides to protect herself by any means necessary, which to her translates to putting almost all her new money to buying a failing flower farm in Asheville, North Carolina to let the flowers live out their plant destiny while she uses the cabin on the property to start her painting business. But her plans for isolation and self-preservation go hopelessly awry when an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Boden is waiting for her at her new farm. Pepper states she's the rightful owner of Thistle and Bloom Farms, and isn't moving out. The unlikely pair strike up an agreement of co-habitation, and butt heads at every turn. Can these opposites both live out their dreams and plant roots? Or will their combustible arguing (and growing attraction) burn the whole place down?"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The spoiled heart / Sunjeev Sahota. |
 "Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She's returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and--though she's strangely guarded--Nayan can't help but be drawn to her. He hasn't risked love since losing his young family in a terrible accident twenty years earlier. In the wake of the tragedy, Nayan's labor union, long a cornerstone of his community, became the center of his life: a way for him to channel his energies into making the world a better--fairer, as he sees it--place. Now, he's decided to mount a run for the leadership. But his campaign pits him against a newcomer, Megha, who quickly proves to be a more formidable challenger than he anticipated. As Nayan's differences with Megha spin out of control, complicating the ideals he's always held dear, he grows closer to Helen--and unknowingly barrels toward long-held secrets about how their pasts might be connected. Suddenly, much more is threatened than his chances of winning. In one sense a tragedy in the classic mold, tracing one man's seemingly inexorable fall, The Spoiled Heart is also an explosively contemporary story of how a few words or a single action--to one person careless, to another, charged--can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences. A vivid and multi-layered exploration of the mysteries of the heart, how community is forged and broken, and the shattering impact of secrets and assumptions alike, it is a blazing achievement from one of Britain's foremost living writers"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Safe and sound : a novel / Laura McHugh. |
 "Amelia and Kylee, two young sisters, were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in rural Missouri, leaving behind evidence of a violent struggle. Grace had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and going to work at the meatpacking plant. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better. Now about to graduate high school, Amelia and Kylee dream about getting out of their small town of Beaumont one day, but the likelihood of that happening seems as low as that of Grace being found. When a discovery of human remains reveals a disturbing connection to Grace, the sisters think they finally know who took her, but as they dig deeper into Grace's past, they unearth long-buried secrets and a growing list of suspects. In a town no one ever leaves, there are only so many places to hide, and the sisters vow to find Grace, dead or alive. As they draw closer to the truth and slip deeper into danger, they question how far someone would go to put a woman in her place, or to cover up a crime. The answer is worse than they could have imagined, and in the end, it won't just be Grace they're trying to save-they'll have to fight for their lives"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Nothing without me : a novel / Helen Monks Takhar. |
 "April Eden is about to have the night of her life. After years struggling uphill as a female director, her debut movie The Vanished Woman is up for a major British film award, placing her firmly on Hollywood's radar. Her leading lady, Essie Lay--a fragile but magnetic former TV host--is on the cusp of a stunning comeback after being canceled for a disturbing scandal."-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Operation Heartbreak / Duff Cooper with an afterword by Michael Hoffman. |
 A perfectly told tale of defeat and glory; and a paean to gallantry in the face of the absurd; inspired by a real-life secret mission during World War II. Orphaned in the first months of World War One, when his father is killed in action, Willie Maryington dreams only of joining the same cavalry regiment and going to the front. The Armistice dashes seventeen-year-old Willie's plans, but not his dreams of glory, and he makes the regiment the center of his adult existence. Yet, as the years go by, Willie falls increasingly out of step, not only with civilian life, but with the modern military, where horse charges are a thing of the past, and where a gulf yawns between those who saw action and those who did not. When hostilities break out again between Germany and England, Willie has become a relic. No one could guess that he will be chosen for a mission whose outcome might well decide the course of the Second World War. Inspired by a real-life triumph of British counterintelligence (codenamed zOperation Mincemeaty), and based on classified sources, Operation Heartbreak was suppressed by the British government until 1950. |
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| Bless your heart / Lindy Ryan. |
 "A crackling mystery-horror novel with big-hearted characters and Southern charm with a bite, Bless Your Heart is a gasp-worthy delight from start to finish from debut author Lindy Ryan. Rise and shine. The Evans women have some undead to kill. It's 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with...normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That's how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny-Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore's soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone. But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy's body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it's clear that the Strigoi-the original vampire-are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town. As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi's return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes, the dead aren't the only things you want to keep buried. "A gloriously gruesome, compulsively readable debut that is as grizzly as it is clever and heartfelt." - Rachel Harrison"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Calypso / Oliver K. Langmead ; illustrations by Darren Kerrigan. |
 "Rochelle wakes from cryostasis to take up her role as engineer on the colony ark, Calypso. But she finds the ship has transformed into a forest, populated by the original crew's descendants, who revere her like a saint. She travels the ship with the Calypso's creator, the enigmatic Sigmund, and Catherine, a bioengineered marvel who can commune with the plants, uncovering a new history of humanity forged while she slept. She discovers a legacy of war between botanists and engineers. A war fought for the right to build a new Earth - a technological paradise, or a new Eden in bloom, untouched by mankind's past. And Rochelle, the last to wake, holds the balance of power in her hands." -- Goodreads. |
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| Ladies of the Rachmaninoff eyes / Henry Van Dyke ; foreword by Erik Wood. |
 Portrait of two elderly widows - a Jewish lady and her Negro servant-companion - who have developed a kinship of alternating moods. |
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| Bury your gays : an anthology of tragic queer horror / edited by Sofia Ajram. |
 "A manifestation of ecstasy, heartache, horror and suffering rendered in feverish lyrical prose. Inside are sixteen new stories by some of the genre's most visionary queer writers. Young lovers find themselves deliriously lost in an expanding garden labyrinth. The porter of a sentient hotel is haunted within a liminal time loop. A soldier and his abusive commanding officer escape a war in the trenches but discover themselves in an even greater nightmare. Parasites chase each other across time-space in hungry desperation to never be apart. A graduate student with violent tendencies falls into step with a seemingly walking corpse." -- back cover. |
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| Where there's smoke / Kiki Swinson. |
 "Kill your secrets . . . Volunteer Virginia Beach firefighter Alayna Curry used to pride herself on saving lives. But now, determined to conceal her part in an arson-for-insurance scam gone bad, she's using her skills to have the scheme's leader, Tim, her ex-lover, shot dead, claiming it was a robbery. She's carefully set him up to be the ultimate fall guy. And she's ruthlessly aiming to silence more witnesses, which will also get her beloved brother Alonzo out of prison . . . Conceal your lies . . . . . . Until Alayna has to desperately defend herself against Tim's vengeful wife and his other grieving side piece's very public accusations, all while fighting to stay steps ahead of the fellow firefighters she betrayed, and the husband she's long past fallen out of love with . . . Watch your back . . . With a determined FBI agent and the police pulling apart her story, and her lies, bit by bit, Alayna recklessly plays her most dangerous trump card to free Alonzo and clear her name for good. But will one body too many be the catalyst that finally blows her chances of escape, and survival, to pieces?"-- Publisher's website. |
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| Funny story / Emily Henry. |
 "A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry, Daphne always loved the way Peter told their story. How they met, fell in love, and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. Too bad it turned out to be more of a prequel, a complication to Peter's actual love story, the one that ends with him dumping Daphne before their wedding to begin a relationship with his lifelong best friend, Petra. And so that's how Daphne's story really begins: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children's librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only other non-Peter-related person she knows: Petra's heartbroken ex, Miles Nowak. Just until she can get a new dream job literally anywhere else. Scruffy and chaotic, Miles is entirely the opposite of buttoned-up Daphne, and they mainly avoid one another until one night, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship. Miles decides he will convince Daphne to give Waning Bay a real shot. He'll show her why he loves this idyllic town and its residents, and if they happen to post deliberately misleading photos of their adventures together-for a particular audience of two-who could blame them? Miles believes Daphne deserves the chance to build a life here, her own life. As she begins to fall for the town, Daphne wonders what this summer is supposed to mean. Is it just for fun? An interlude to her own love story? Or maybe it was never meant to be a love story? Maybe it was just an anecdote to share at future dinner parties: that time she fell in love with her ex-fiancé's new fiancée's ex-boyfriend. Who's to say?"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| When I think of you / Myah Ariel. |
 "In this sweeping second chance romance from debut author Myah Ariel, the unexpected spark of two former flames may force them to choose between their dreams and each other. Kaliya Wilson has paid her dues. But all the years behind the reception desk at a flashy film studio have only pushed her movie-making dreams further out of reach. That is, until a surprise reunion presents an opportunity that could make her career, or break her heart...a second time. It's been seven years since Kaliya's whirlwind college romance with Danny Prescott went up in flames. While her passions have stalled, his career is taking off. So when the hot shot director reappears to offer her a job on his next production, it's a shock to the system. Working with Danny may recapture the intensity of their film school days, but trusting him again won't come as easily. As the pair allows themselves the openness and vulnerability to entrust their deepest truths to each other, the possibility of a true connection draws ever closer. But when Hollywood politics and scandal threaten to sink the production and her career, Kaliya may have to risk everything to do what's right-even if it means letting go of the second chance love of a lifetime"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| While we were burning / Sara Koffi. |
 "After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith's picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control-so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs and slides so neatly into Elizabeth's life, almost like she belonged there from the start. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend's death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it. Because Brianna has questions too. She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son. Why someone in Elizabeth's neighborhood called the cops on him that day. Who took that first step that stole her child away from her. And the only way she's ever going to be able to find out is to entwine herself deep into Elizabeth's life, where the answers to her questions lie. As the two women hurtle towards an electrifying final showdown, and the lines between employer and friend blur, it becomes clear that neither of them is what they first appear"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| You know what you did : a novel / K.T. Nguyen. |
 "Is someone out to get Annie? Or is she her own worst enemy?"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The angry land / William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone. |
 After a cattle train bound for Texas is ambushed by blood-thirsty rustlers, legendary mountain man Smoke Jensen, on a mission of vengeance, vows to bring swift--and deadly--justice to the men responsible. |
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| Earls trip / Jenny Holiday. |
 "Even an earl needs his ride-or-dies, and Archibald Fielding-Burton, the Earl of Harcourt, counts himself lucky to have two. The annual trip that Archie takes with his BFFs Simon and Effie holds a sacred spot in their calendars. This year Archie is especially eager to get away until an urgent letter arrives from an old family friend, begging him to help prevent a ruinous scandal. Suddenly the trip has become earls-plus-girls, as Archie's childhood pals, Clementine and Olive Morgan, are rescued en route to Gretna Green. This...complicates matters. The fully grown Clementine, while as frank and refreshing as he remembers, is also different to the wild, windswept girl he knew. This Clem is complex and surprising--and adamantly opposed to marriage. Which, for reasons Archie dare not examine too closely, he finds increasingly vexing. Then Clem makes him an indecent and quite delightful proposal, asking him to show her the pleasures of the marriage bed before she settles into spinsterhood. And what kind of gentleman would he be to refuse a lady?"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The book of thorns / Hester Fox. |
 "In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars and the rise of the floriography craze in Europe, two sisters separated at birth are bound together by a secret language of flowers passed down to them by the mother they never knew. When Cornelia leaves her cruel uncle’s home to join Napoleon’s army as a traveling naturalist, her ability to heal any wound and bring soldiers back from the brink of death earns her praise from higher-ups—and exposes her to those who would exploit her powers for themselves. Meanwhile, Lijsbeth lives in indentured servitude, her only respite her time spent flower arranging. When she meets a young English soldier and falls in love, Lisjbeth must decide whether to flee the clashing of two great armies at Waterloo or risk everything by staying. As the English and French armies collide in Waterloo, the sisters finally cross paths on opposite sides of the war. With the sisters reunited on the battlefield, they must work together to solve the mystery of their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, all while surviving the war raging around them." -- Goodreads.com |
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| Midnight harbor / Davis Bunn. |
 When his Aunt Amelia, his closest friend and greatest supporter, passes away, leaving him her home in Miramar, classical guitarist Ian Hart uses this opportunity to reflect and move forward after a scandal destroyed his career but instead finds himself drawn to another newcomer, artist Kari Langham, who changes everything. |
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| Green frog : stories / Gina Chung. |
 "Equal parts fantastical -- a pair of talking dolls help twins escape a stifling home, a heart boils on the stove as part of an elaborate cure for melancholy -- and true to life -- a mother and daughter try to heal their rift when the daughter falls unexpectedly pregnant, a woman reexamines her father's legacy after his death -- the stories in this collection are hopeful and heartbreaking, full of danger and full of joy. Chung is a master at capturing emotion, and her characters -- human and otherwise - will claw their way into your heart and make themselves at home"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| A letter to the luminous deep / Sylvie Cathrall. |
 "A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other. Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.'s home, and she and Henerey vanish. A year later, E.'s sister Sophy, and Henerey's brother Vyerin, are left to solve the mystery, piecing together the letters, sketches and field notes left behind—and learn what their siblings’ disappearance might mean for life as they know it."--Amazon. |
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| Days of wonder : a novel / by Caroline Leavitt. |
 "As a teenager, for a moment, Ella Fitchburg found love--yearning, breathless love--that consumed both her and her boyfriend, Jude, as they wandered the streets of New York City together. But her life was unexpectedly upended when she was accused of trying to murder Jude's father, an imperious superior court judge, and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. When she learns she's pregnant shortly after sentencing, she reluctantly decides to give up the child"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers : a novel / Samuel Burr. |
 "Clayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution. When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton's life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. So begins Clay's quest to uncover the secrets surrounding his birth, secrets that will change the Clay-and the Fellowship-forever. The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers is pure joy, a story about love and family and what it means to find your people-no matter what age you are"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| The tree doctor : a novel / Marie Mutsuki Mockett. |
 While caring for her Japanese mother, an unnamed narrator, preoccupied with her mother's garden, embarks on a torrid affair with an arborist equally fascinated by it and as she becomes obsessed with the awakening of her own body, she begins to see her mother's illness as part of a natural order. |
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| One last word : a novel / Suzanne Park. |
 The founder of the One Last Word app, which allows you to send messages to whomever you want after you pass, Sara Chae, when she accidentally sends her final words to the important people in her life, including her former crush, with whom she now works, finds her life turned upside down. |
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